Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales

Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations), abbreviated as INALCO, is a French Grand Etablissement with a specializing in the teaching of languages and cultures from the world. Its coverage spans languages of Central Europe, Africa, Asia, America, and Oceania. With 104 languages taught as of 2024, this institution is currently the world's largest provider of language training courses.

It is also informally called Langues’O  in French, an abbreviation for Langues orientales.

The INALCO logo is made up of the school's acronym, each part of which is translated into languages written in non-Latin characters, corresponding to Inalco's fields of teaching and research.

History

 * 1669 Jean-Baptiste Colbert founds the École des jeunes de langues language school
 * 1795 The École spéciale des langues orientales (Special School for Oriental Languages) is established
 * 1873 The two schools merge
 * 1914 The school is renamed the École nationale des langues orientales vivantes (ENLOV)
 * 1971 The school is renamed the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales or Inalco (National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations)
 * 1984 Inalco is recognized as a Grand établissement
 * 2010 Inalco becomes a founding member of Sorbonne Paris Cité
 * 2011 Inalco centralizes all of its taught courses under one roof at 65 rue des Grands Moulins in Paris

Organization
Inalco is structured partly into departments, whose perimeter corresponds to a region of the world, and partly into professionally-oriented courses or sectors. Departments may be monolingual or group together several language sections. Inalco's courses prepare students for careers in intercultural communication and training, international trade, teaching French as a foreign language, advanced international studies, and Natural Language Processing.

List of departments and sections (and their languages)

 * Africa and Indian Ocean (Amharic, Bambara, Chleuh, Comorian, Fulani, Hausa, Kabyle, Malagasy, Mandingo, Soninke, Swahili, Tuareg, Wolof, Yoruba)
 * South Asia Himalayas (Bengali, Hindi, Nepali, Urdu, Rromani, Sanskrit, Sinhalese, Tamil, Telugu, Tibetan)
 * Southeast Asia and the Pacific (Bisaya, Burmese, Bislama, Cham, Drehu, Tagalog, Ilocano, Indonesian Malay, Khmer, Lao, Môn, Thai, Tahitian, Taï lü, Vietnamese)
 * Arabic Studies (Modern Standard Arabic, Classical Arabic, Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Egyptian, Syrian-Lebanese)
 * Chinese Studies (Standard Chinese, Min, Classical Chinese)
 * Korean Studies (Korean)
 * Hebrew and Jewish Studies (Biblical, Rabbinic, Medieval and Modern Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Spanish, Yiddish)
 * Japanese Studies (Japanese)
 * Russian Studies (Russian, Belarusian)
 * Eurasia (Armenian, Azeri, Georgian, Kurdish, Mongolian, Ossetian, Uyghur, Uzbek, Pashto, Persian, Kazakh, Tatar, Turkish)
 * Europe (Polish, Czech, Sorbian, Slovak, Slovene, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Udmurt, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Modern Greek, Albanian)
 * Languages and cultures of the Americas (Inuktitut languages, Mayan languages, Quechuan languages, Guarani, Nahuatl)

List of sectors

 * International trade
 * Intercultural communication and training
 * Language didactics
 * International relations
 * Text, Computing, and Mutlilingualism (NLP)

The Institute offers initial training at Bachelor's, Master's and PhD levels, as well as continuing education open to external students and professionals. Foreign students can take French as a foreign language courses. Short, à la carte courses, evening classes and “practical certificates” are also popular.

Success and failure
Compared to other French universities, many Bachelor programs at INALCO show high failure rates, i.e. high proportions of students failing the course in their end-of-year exam (65% of success in the 3rd year, compared to 74% nation-wide). This is particularly true among students specializing in Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Russian and Arabic historically the largest departments of INALCO.

As an example, with approximate student numbers, indicating rates of success and failure in the first, second, and third year of the Department of Japanese Studies.

An explanation sometimes given is the difficulty of these courses, or the high level required by INALCO. A more likely cause is the absence of any entrance examination: any student can register in any course, regardless of their true motivation or academic level. But this is not the case of the Japanese Studies Department anymore for more than ten years 2015 (only around 300 of the 1200 to 1300 applicants are accepted to enter the cursus each year). Many students select a language out of a superficial interest in a country or culture, or due to individual connections, yet without the commitment to thoroughly learning those difficult languages. This issue is particularly acute for first and second-year students; those who reach the third year are much more motivated, and thus show much higher rates of success.

Overview
Research at Inalco combines area studies and academic fields. Researchers study languages and civilizations that are increasingly in the spotlight – Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and as far as the Arctic – and are central to the major issues of the 21st century. Fourteen research teams, often partnered with other research organizations, PhD programs, and a publishing service form the backbone of research at Inalco. Inalco also has a project management and knowledge transfer service.

The research teams, administration offices, and doctoral school are housed in a building dedicated entirely to research, with access to a full range of support functions: assistance in preparing research proposals and grant applications, organizing scientific events, looking for partnerships and funding, publication support, internal funding, and communication.


 * 14 research teams (see below)


 * 270 faculty members
 * 300 PhD students
 * 100 scientific events per year

Research Teams
Local units:


 * CERLOM (Centre d'Etude et de Recherche sur les Littératures et les Oralités du Monde)
 * CERMOM (Centre d'Etudes et de Recherche Moyen-Orient, Méditerranée)
 * CREE (Centre de Recherche Europes-Eurasie)
 * ERTIM (Équipe de Recherche Textes, Informatique, Multilinguisme)
 * LACNAD (Langues et Cultures du Nord de l’Afrique et Diasporas)
 * PLIDAM (Pluralité des Langues et des Identités: Didactique – Acquisition – Médiations)

Joint research units (UMR):


 * CASE (Centre Asie du Sud-Est) - with EHESS and CNRS
 * CeRMI (Centre de Recherche sur le Monde Iranien) - with Sorbonne nouvelle, EPHE, and CNRS
 * CESSMA (Centre d’études en sciences sociales sur les mondes africains, américains et asiatiques) - with UPC and IRD
 * CRLAO (Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l'Asie orientale) - with EHESS and CNRS
 * IFRAE (Institut français de recherche sur l’Asie de l’Est) - with UPC and CNRS
 * LACITO (Langues et Civilisations à Tradition orale) - with Sorbonne Nouvelle and CNRS
 * LLACAN (Langage, Langues et Cultures d’Afrique) - with EPHE and CNRS
 * SeDyL (Structure et Dynamique des Langues) - with IRD and CNRS

Presidents
From 1914 to 1969, presidents were called administrators.

International
Inalco conducts research projects in more than one hundred countries and offers joint programs with foreign universities. This enables Inalco students and their international counterparts to enhance their studies through immersive experiences. Inalco also provides distance learning courses through videoconferencing and online resources, offering instruction in Arabic, Armenian, Burmese, Estonian, Modern Hebrew, Inuktitut, Lithuanian, Malagasy, Quechua, Sinhalese, Slovak, and Swahili.

Inalco is an active member of Sorbonne Paris Cité, with 120,000 students, 8,500 faculty members, and 6,000 technical and administrative staff. Branches have been opened in Singapore, Buenos Aires and São Paulo.

Inalco is in 2007 a founding member of the Consortium for Asian and African Studies (CAAS), with the School of Oriental and African Studies (UK), the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (Japan), Leiden University (Netherlands), and the National University of Singapore. Since, they have been joined by Columbia University (USA), the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (South Korea), and Shanghai International Studies University (China).

The foundation strives to develop the preservation, study, transmission, development and interaction of languages and cultures in France and around the world with projects involving the institute's expertise: education, research, advancing knowledge and skills in a globalized world.

More than 120 nationalities are represented by Inalco faculty and students. The institute, along with its teachers, students and partners, organizes over a hundred cultural events a year. Inalco also participates in several international film festivals (such as the Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema) and makes every effort to share its knowledge and expertise with society.

Notable professors and alumni

 * Ivan Aguéli
 * Meryem Benm'Barek-Aloïsi
 * Doris Bensimon
 * Augustin Berque
 * Boris Boillon
 * Luce Boulnois
 * Rémi Brague
 * Louis-Jacques Bresnier
 * Marianne Bastid-Bruguière
 * Auguste Carrière
 * Gérard Chaliand
 * Jean-François Champollion
 * Henry Corbin
 * Léon Damas
 * Luc-Willy Deheuvels
 * Jean-Luc Domenach
 * Mathias Énard
 * Philippe Étienne
 * Bernard Faure
 * Edgar Faure
 * Princess Fawzia-Latifa of Egypt
 * François Godement
 * Bruno Gollnisch
 * Maurice Gourdault-Montagne
 * Marcel Granet
 * Marcel Griaule
 * Claude Hagège
 * Prince Henrik of Denmark
 * Isabelle Huppert
 * Guillaume Jacques
 * Georges Kersaudy
 * Ysabelle Lacamp
 * Jonathan Lacôte, French Ambassador to Armenia
 * Hervé Ladsous
 * Gilbert Lazard
 * Iaroslav Lebedynsky
 * Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer
 * Jacques Legrand
 * Jean-David Levitte
 * Nathalie Loiseau
 * André Malraux
 * Pierre Messmer
 * Pierre Mornand
 * Louise Peltzer
 * Patrick Poivre d'Arvor
 * Princess Maria Laura of Belgium, Archduchess of Austria-Este
 * Pierre Messmer
 * Jean-Jacques Origas
 * Trinidad Pardo de Tavera
 * Louis Réau
 * Clotilde Reiss
 * Dagpo Rinpoche
 * Olivier Roy
 * Laurent Sagart
 * André Santini
 * Léopold de Saussure
 * Aurélien Sauvageot
 * Johann Gustav Stickel
 * Hissein Brahim Taha
 * Nahal Tajadod
 * Serge Telle
 * Virginie Thévenet
 * Germaine Tillion
 * Nicole Vandier-Nicolas
 * Arnold Van Gennep
 * Jacques Vergès
 * Jean-Christophe Victor
 * Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch
 * Olivier Weber

General

 * Inalco official website
 * Alumni website

Research teams

 * CASE website
 * CeRMI website
 * CESSMA website
 * CREE blog
 * CRLAO website
 * ERTIM website
 * IFRAE website
 * LACITO website
 * LACNAD website
 * LLACAN website
 * SeDYL website
 * Anthrop’O